VIPER. | NATURAL HISTORY. 333 
came, and seeing his female so gripped by the Viper, he 
ceased not to peck upon his head until the brains came 
out, and so the Viper fell down dead. The scorpions and 
the Vipers are enemies one to another. The tortoise of 
the earth is ‘also an enemy to the Viper, and the Viper to 
it, wherefore if it can get origan, or wild savory, or rue, 
it eateth thereof, and then is nothing afraid to fight with 
the Viper, but if the tortoise can find none of these, then 
they die incontinently by the poison of the Viper, and of 
this there hath been trial. Garlic is poison to the Viper, 
and therefore having tasted thereof she dieth, except she 
eat some rue. A Viper being struck with a reed once, it 
amazeth her, and maketh her senseless, but being struck 
the second time, she recovereth and runneth away; and 
the like is reported of the beech-tree, saving that it slayeth 
the Viper, and she is not able to go from it. If you lay 
fire on the one side, and a piece of yew on the other side, 
and then place a Viper in the middle betwixt them both, 
she will rather choose to run through the fire, than to go 
over the branches of yew. The Viper is also afraid of 
mustard-seed, for, it being laid in her path, she flieth from 
it, and, if she taste of it, she dieth. If the hands or the 
body of a man be anointed with the juice of the root of 
Arum, the Viper will never bite him ; the like is reported 
of the juice of Dragons, expressed out of the leaves, fruit, 
or root. Also if a Viper do behold a good smaragd 
[emerald], her eyes will melt and fall out of her head. 
But the Viper is most delighted with vetches and the 
savine-tree. When the male misseth the female, he seeketh 
her out very diligently, and with a pleasing and flattering 
noise calleth for her, and when he perceiveth she ap- 
proacheth, he casteth up all his venom, as it were in rever- 
ence of matrimonial dignity. In Egypt they eat Vipers 
and divers other serpents, with no more difficulty than they 
would do eels, so do many people both in the Eastern and 
Western parts of the New-found-lands. Whose diet of 
eating Vipers I do much pity, if the want of other food 
constrain them thereunto; but if it arise from the insatiable 
and greedy intemperancy of their own appetites, I judge 
them eager of dainties, which adventure for it at such a 
market of poison. A mountain-viper chased a man so 
hardly that he was forcea to take a tree, unto the which 
